Eurofile

After a decade of striving for success, David Bowie finally had it all. And then he seemed to throw it all away by killing off “my monster”

As Portugal sailed the world’s seas in the 15th and 16th centuries, its language spread globally – nowhere further than Macao

This is a dessert worth queuing for. It’s a bit different and absolutely worth trying

The contest looks plausibly like an alternative governmental structure for our fissiparous yet self-loving continent

Wherever she went, the breakout role which made her name always seemed to be at her shoulder

An exile’s redemptive return to track four generations of family history in the “backyard of a country that still thinks it’s an empire”

Martin Scorsese, Steve McQueen and the late Martin Amis deliver the goods at an unexpectedly soggy Cannes Film Festival

The rivalry and respect between Manet and Degas

1990s musical Once on This Island gets a sensational revival

Martin Amis once confided his belief that his literary legacy would not last long. It was one of the rare occasions that he was wrong

In an age of stultified self-censorship and blandness, we have lost an author who always ran towards gunfire

How the KGB took their Cold War tactics from a Chinese military strategist who died 500 years before the birth of Christ - and why they still work

Based on a WWII deception that fooled the Nazis, Operation Mincemeat is a deft pastiche

Is The Ugly Duchess a work of misogyny, a portrait of deformity or the mocking of an aristocrat? Or all three?

Artificial intelligence can create a so-so approximation of what John Betjeman might have made of Brexit. But can it write with soul?

Today only the Hebridean islands remain strongholds of a language that was once dominant across almost all of Scotland

The Austrian’s life was defined by a single event lasting 55 seconds

Having waited his entire life for this coronation service, and having apparently played a central role in devising it, the King was nonetheless unable to memorise his own lines

Romans, in particular, become stressed when dishes are vandalised. Serve this to a Roman nonna and she may well try to conquer you again

East Germany’s first black policeman started the 1990s as a media phenomenon, but ended it in jail. A new series tells his story

Remembering a master, 40 years after his death

The pipe dream that the genie of AI is going to be thrust back in the bottle is just that

How a simple linguistic mistake linked a nymph from Greek mythology to the music genre that originated in the Caribbean

Napoli’s joy at winning Serie A is about much more than their long wait – it is about a history of abuse from their northern rivals

Life need not be completely depressing in modern Britain. Praise be to pie

A meditative masterpiece explores rediscovered friendships and the art of finding simpler ways through our complex world

The American right’s culture battles are creating empty shelves in Republican states. Could Britain join in with this madness?

A new exhibition explores whether Ancient Greece's labyrinth existed or was a confection of the imagination cultivated over the centuries

Nightmares were the business of Hans Ruedi Giger, who drew on his own to create surrealist art – and the creature at the heart of Alien

The recent Ed Sheeran plagiarism court case revives the old question of where music really comes from

Many TV comedy actors come a cropper when they turn to serious stage roles, but the League of Gentlemen star captures Sir John magnificently

Forget the headlines. Children's reading comprehension is on the decline, and their books are to blame